One of the voice taunts included in the beta demo is "You play like a girl". I am not saying it should be removed, PC be damned, but it's quite indicative, isn't it?:)
On the other hand, my younger sister (20 years old) got hooked on the demo instantly.:) She never liked single player FPS games, but after trying UT2004 online she was even compelled to overcome her P2P addiction and close KaZaA and eDonkey.:)))
It was quite funny to hear her bragging about her team winning 4:1 in CTF with her brinding all the flags.:) If you see girl-neto on one of UT2004 servers, be kind.:))
Did I miss something? Is retro-luddism a new IT on Slashdot? No longer favourable to bash SCO and praise Linux?
Call me a luddite, but why do we really need the next nVidia card or an Athlon CPU? Call me a luddite, but why do we need robots driving cars? Call me a luddite, but why do all those people need to go to space? Can't they just stay at home and watch TV, like God intended.
Call me an intolerant asshole, but people like you and RetroGeek make me sick, as well as those who upmoderated you. Nobody is forcing to use these products and it's not like they are using your money. So, would you please shut the fuck up and let others proceed with the progress. I would be much obliged.
I would hate this as I like to have that feeling of something being depressed when I type.
- I would hate to use mouse for navigation as I like to give the computer exact commands. - I would hate to have a scroll wheel on the mouse as I can accidentally rotate it. - I would hate to have shut down key next to the up arrow key as I might accidentally... Err, that's a valid one.
How about trying it? You don't know whether you will like it or not until you just try using it for an hour. I thought online shooters would suck on my setup, because my net connection would be too slow and the games would be too cumbersome to set up. Turns out UT2004 it's a breeze on my ADSL, easy to use and extremely addictive. Who would have known...:)
There is good tech and bad tech, but let's judge it after trying, ok?
Frankly, speech recognition has some good uses for AUGMENTING input. I'd rather say "EXPANDING". I often talk with people about very interesting and creative stuff, which is generated semi-randomly on the fly, and thus is impossible to recreate later in front of my computer. I would really like to have these talks recorded and transcribed automatically.
Furthermore, it is extremely wrong to think of speech recognition as a keyboard replacement, similar to existing solutions. The interfaces would have to be redesigned with the speech recognition capability in mind, not with it as afterthought (like it is in MS Office today or any other product). Menus were designed for keyboard and later modified for mouse. Using them with speech recognition is going too far.
Speech recognition will become useful when computers will become smart enough to do all tasks that are easier done than explained by themselves. Deleting a file is easy by pressing F8. But a system can be made such that you just don't have to delete the files, they are created, backed up, stored and retrieved without your active participation. Same with almost all other examples.
Detect typos? Who do you think you are, a spell checker? The computers of tomorrow will be capable of detecting common mistakes and correcting them automatically. In this particular case the P-ISM (BTW, "writing" and "letter" [message] in Russian are "pismo") might be able to understand where you think the keyboard is, based on the relative positions of the keys and on valid character sequences. E.g. if I typed "jwtviard" it would understand that I meant "keyboard", but missed the keys.
Check out As-U-Type, a nice piece of software that fixes spelling mistakes in any Windows application (or underlines them with red, which doesn't work in Opera, though...). That's the kind of technology that may be helpful to P-ISM users.
P.S. There may be errors in this post, since As-U-Type is not compatible with another piece of software, which I use to automatically switch from Latin to Cyrillic.:(
You don't understand economics, sorry. Macroeconomics, that is. And macroeconomics is not about free markets, it's about P=C+S+G+(I-E) (not sure about letters, it's production equals consumption plus savings plus govt spendings plus net imports) and about P=Pa+Pb, which is production equals production of manufacturing equipment plus production of consumer goods (there is also waste, i.e. military budget).
To grow the economy, you need more Pa to increase the amount of capital in the economy. The more Pa, the better, as long as you can assimilate it quickly and efficiently. And one of the best ways to do it is for the government to spend on this capital. In this century IT amounts for a large amount of necessary capital (of course, in India they need lots of basic stuff as well), so it totally makes for the govt there to buy lots of IT.
Markets don't work as efficiently, when you need to forcibly increase the size of the economy.
With that kind of enterprise and foresight, I can never begrudge an out-sourced Indian programmer his living.
Good point, but this is completely natural and expected. Western kids were raised in an affluent society and they learned that hard work really is optional (the USA likes to pretend it is based on hard work and protestant ethics, but, admit it, compared with India even the most hardworking American is a playboy). That is basically correct. The unemployment problems in the US do not really bode doom and gloom... Of course, Indians (and Chinese, etc.) understand the need to work much better. Wait a few decades, I tell you.;)
You call that statistics?:) Real statistics would tell you that the majority of FDI is made from one developed country to another. Think USA EU Japan. Then you need to take the 10-15% claim with a grain of salt (the research on such topic is extremely complicated). It might as well be 2-5%. And they do not earn enough in $$$ to be middle class, the single reason why they are so rich is that their brethren are so poor. You too can be a Maharajah, just save 100 grands or so and move to India or Sri Lanka (like A. C. Clarke). Invest it and live on the dividends/interest.:)
The main hope for India comes not from outsourcing or domestic market growth. The main hope for India, like for all other countries, comes from advanced nanotechnology and AI.
I guess I don't understand how in a "global economy", that kind of difference in the cost of living survives The main reason is no free movement of people across borders. If every Indian could legally come to the USA, EU, Japan, Australia or any other place and try to work/live there, you would have great turmoil for a couple of years and then the standards would equalise.
As it is, though, most Indians can't move abroad a?? can't find a job (a decent one) in India, so they agree to work for peanuts. This drives the costs of locally produced goods and services down. Of course, the computer would cost you the same everywhere, but everything labour-intensive would be dirt cheap.
So, what is wrong with paying a little bit money to read the news that your own leisure. The news are enriching the common information pool. It's not technically public domain, but the idea is similar. People all other the country and even all over the world can improve their lives (if only a little bit) by reading free online sites. It is misleading to think of the audience as consisting entirely of people who would have otherwise paid for the print edition.
Of course, that doesn't apply to some entertainment drivel, I have nothing against charging for latest gossip, etc., but the problem is that this kind of content is universally available for free (ad-supported), because nobody in their right mind would pay for that.:)
They don't need to know that YOU read the story. The ??? method of splitting most stories into two or more pages should work pretty well. If many people read the whole article, write more things like that. If noone read the last part, change something or ditch it all together.
Why should we pay many times for what was written only once? I certainly understand that content sites may face financial problems, but the benefits of free access to everyone outweight these losses. If they switch towards memberships, the net effect for the society will be negative.
We don't need memberships, we don't need micropayments, we need a method to provide money to the sites irrespective of the size of their current audience.
His suggestions will undoubtably push you to be more outgoing than what most job seekers are comfortable with, but that's what puts you ahead of everybody else in the game.
That's just stupid! Why people are constantly forced to go to such lengths in order to get something as simple as a job. It's not like being outgoing is really needed in most positions, after all, we are not talking about salesmen...
For thousands of years it always was more of the same. But in the near future we will have to make a choice, or actually the choice will make itself, based mostly on large scale system changes that we have no direct control over.
We will have to chose between a tech-based totalitarian police state, immune to all resistance, controlling the population with a wide range of technologies, and a non-society of extremely empowered self-sufficient individuals, answering to noone and being able to use the same advanced technologies for self-realisation and self-improvement.
This technology is scary, because it is so powerful (potentially, not in this particular implementation). Paper passport is not scary, but an implanted biometric RFID passport connected 24h to a global network and millions of cameras and other tracking devices is.
It's not like anyone should care about terrorists. Whether they win or lose, that doesn't matter. What matters is that normal people are losing. Terrorists kill tens of thousands of times less people than die from other causes. In the grand scheme of things terrorist acts are totally irrelevant.
But the government wants to use terrorism as a reason to get greater powers for itself. Actually, it doesn't want anything, but simple evolutionary pressures cause government entities and politicians to grab more power (to simplify, those who manage to get more power, get more and more of it, until they control everything).
People will not benefit from national IDs or biometric controls. Terrorists will not suffer from that. The paradox is that government will not benefit from it either, other than acquiring yet more power. Sadly, evolution selects for power-grabbing behaviour.:(
What do you think was the most popular Google request a few weeks ago? A boob of Janet Jackson, right? Does that mean all web (all Google) is porn? Similarly, the argument that all P2P is illegal is fallacious.
P.S. Frankly, I never understood the American obsession with celebrities... A week ago "Namedni", a program on Russian TV did a feature on Paparazzis, who sounded really sad at that fact that Russian audience isn't really interested in juicy/spicy photos or stories.:)
You got it wrong. In Russia you have the right to examine (and write down the details) cop's ID, which he must show to you on demand (in addition to the badge he must be wearing).
If a cop stops someone in Russia, he must first introduce himself, clearly speaking his name and the rank. The citizen has the right to question any actions (and ask for reasons), unlike what ACLU is suggesting to Americans, and as I already said, to demand a cop's ID shown.
The cop's may request an ID, but they may demand it only in the case when there are reasons to believe a crime (administrative offence) has been committed, i.e. they saw it, someone else saw it and points to me to the cop, or there is visible evidence. And of course, the refusal to provide an ID is not a crime by itself.
I was born in 1980 in Leningrad, Union of Soviet Socialist Republic. Today I still live in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation. So far I've been stopped by police, let me remember... just about 5 times or so. First it happened when I was 4 years old (1984, get it!:] ) and took my girlfriend (was I lucky:] ) to a walk to my grandparents (a 30 km hike across the city).:) Was taken to a police station, questioned, detained and shown some cool stuff, including guns (they even let me hold one:] ). Then was stopped once (in 1990s) when I forgot my metro pass and was trying to stowaway. I ran away, though.:) Then once again in metro, when I was asked to show what was in my bag (I was on my way to the railway station and then to Finland). And was asked two or three times more, always in metro. That's it. And nobody else ever asked me for an ID (except for administrative purposes, like when I am hired, enter a university, etc.). Other than government issued ID I used a one in a business-centre where I worked and a student ID to enter the university building.
That's about it. Unfortunately, in other respects Russia is less free. For example, a passport is needed to board long-distance train or plane.:( On the other hand, nobody asks us to remove our shoes or do other crazy stuff like that in the airport. Still, it's no paradise, but for other reasons mostly. Moving to a decent country, preferably Switzerland or something like that, remains a priority...
In Nevada cops demand you show them an ID. In [no longer] Soviet Russia you demand that a cop shows YOU his ID.
Yes, cops abuse their rights everywhere, but in Russia I have the right to demand an explanation for actions of a policeman, and a policeman only has the right to demand my ID when he has sufficient reasons to believe I have committed a crime or an administrative offence, which is when either: a) he saw me do it b) someone saw me do it and explicitly points to me to the cop c) there is visible evidence d) I am trying to run away
This is pretty much the same now as it ever was in the USSR. So in regards to written laws, Russia is certainly no worse than the US is now.
BTW, we do have a national ID (a passport). It was introduced in the USSR (to limit our freedom, yeah) and it is now required for many administrative tasks (notary certification, selling/buying property, getting a foreign passport, etc.), but in those cases we need to show an ID to the police, we can legally use pretty much anything with a photo, a signature and a stamp.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the voice taunts included in the beta demo is "You play like a girl". I am not saying it should be removed, PC be damned, but it's quite indicative, isn't it? :)
:) She never liked single player FPS games, but after trying UT2004 online she was even compelled to overcome her P2P addiction and close KaZaA and eDonkey. :)))
:) If you see girl-neto on one of UT2004 servers, be kind. :))
On the other hand, my younger sister (20 years old) got hooked on the demo instantly.
It was quite funny to hear her bragging about her team winning 4:1 in CTF with her brinding all the flags.
Did I miss something? Is retro-luddism a new IT on Slashdot? No longer favourable to bash SCO and praise Linux?
Call me a luddite, but why do we really need the next nVidia card or an Athlon CPU? Call me a luddite, but why do we need robots driving cars? Call me a luddite, but why do all those people need to go to space? Can't they just stay at home and watch TV, like God intended.
Call me an intolerant asshole, but people like you and RetroGeek make me sick, as well as those who upmoderated you. Nobody is forcing to use these products and it's not like they are using your money. So, would you please shut the fuck up and let others proceed with the progress. I would be much obliged.
I would hate this as I like to have that feeling of something being depressed when I type.
:)
- I would hate to use mouse for navigation as I like to give the computer exact commands.
- I would hate to have a scroll wheel on the mouse as I can accidentally rotate it.
- I would hate to have shut down key next to the up arrow key as I might accidentally... Err, that's a valid one.
How about trying it? You don't know whether you will like it or not until you just try using it for an hour. I thought online shooters would suck on my setup, because my net connection would be too slow and the games would be too cumbersome to set up. Turns out UT2004 it's a breeze on my ADSL, easy to use and extremely addictive. Who would have known...
There is good tech and bad tech, but let's judge it after trying, ok?
Frankly, speech recognition has some good uses for AUGMENTING input.
I'd rather say "EXPANDING". I often talk with people about very interesting and creative stuff, which is generated semi-randomly on the fly, and thus is impossible to recreate later in front of my computer. I would really like to have these talks recorded and transcribed automatically.
Furthermore, it is extremely wrong to think of speech recognition as a keyboard replacement, similar to existing solutions. The interfaces would have to be redesigned with the speech recognition capability in mind, not with it as afterthought (like it is in MS Office today or any other product). Menus were designed for keyboard and later modified for mouse. Using them with speech recognition is going too far.
Speech recognition will become useful when computers will become smart enough to do all tasks that are easier done than explained by themselves. Deleting a file is easy by pressing F8. But a system can be made such that you just don't have to delete the files, they are created, backed up, stored and retrieved without your active participation. Same with almost all other examples.
Detect typos? Who do you think you are, a spell checker? The computers of tomorrow will be capable of detecting common mistakes and correcting them automatically. In this particular case the P-ISM (BTW, "writing" and "letter" [message] in Russian are "pismo") might be able to understand where you think the keyboard is, based on the relative positions of the keys and on valid character sequences. E.g. if I typed "jwtviard" it would understand that I meant "keyboard", but missed the keys.
:(
Check out As-U-Type, a nice piece of software that fixes spelling mistakes in any Windows application (or underlines them with red, which doesn't work in Opera, though...). That's the kind of technology that may be helpful to P-ISM users.
P.S. There may be errors in this post, since As-U-Type is not compatible with another piece of software, which I use to automatically switch from Latin to Cyrillic.
You don't understand economics, sorry. Macroeconomics, that is. And macroeconomics is not about free markets, it's about P=C+S+G+(I-E) (not sure about letters, it's production equals consumption plus savings plus govt spendings plus net imports) and about P=Pa+Pb, which is production equals production of manufacturing equipment plus production of consumer goods (there is also waste, i.e. military budget).
To grow the economy, you need more Pa to increase the amount of capital in the economy. The more Pa, the better, as long as you can assimilate it quickly and efficiently. And one of the best ways to do it is for the government to spend on this capital. In this century IT amounts for a large amount of necessary capital (of course, in India they need lots of basic stuff as well), so it totally makes for the govt there to buy lots of IT.
Markets don't work as efficiently, when you need to forcibly increase the size of the economy.
With that kind of enterprise and foresight, I can never begrudge an out-sourced Indian programmer his living.
;)
Good point, but this is completely natural and expected. Western kids were raised in an affluent society and they learned that hard work really is optional (the USA likes to pretend it is based on hard work and protestant ethics, but, admit it, compared with India even the most hardworking American is a playboy). That is basically correct. The unemployment problems in the US do not really bode doom and gloom... Of course, Indians (and Chinese, etc.) understand the need to work much better. Wait a few decades, I tell you.
You call that statistics? :) Real statistics would tell you that the majority of FDI is made from one developed country to another. Think USA EU Japan. Then you need to take the 10-15% claim with a grain of salt (the research on such topic is extremely complicated). It might as well be 2-5%. And they do not earn enough in $$$ to be middle class, the single reason why they are so rich is that their brethren are so poor. You too can be a Maharajah, just save 100 grands or so and move to India or Sri Lanka (like A. C. Clarke). Invest it and live on the dividends/interest. :)
The main hope for India comes not from outsourcing or domestic market growth. The main hope for India, like for all other countries, comes from advanced nanotechnology and AI.
I often wonder, why Slashdot doesn't have a -1 (Modappeal) moderation, like they have at Plastic.com...
:)
Of course, now I can expect to get a "-1 (Offtopic)".
I guess I don't understand how in a "global economy", that kind of difference in the cost of living survives
The main reason is no free movement of people across borders. If every Indian could legally come to the USA, EU, Japan, Australia or any other place and try to work/live there, you would have great turmoil for a couple of years and then the standards would equalise.
As it is, though, most Indians can't move abroad a?? can't find a job (a decent one) in India, so they agree to work for peanuts. This drives the costs of locally produced goods and services down. Of course, the computer would cost you the same everywhere, but everything labour-intensive would be dirt cheap.
So, what is wrong with paying a little bit money to read the news that your own leisure.
:)
The news are enriching the common information pool. It's not technically public domain, but the idea is similar. People all other the country and even all over the world can improve their lives (if only a little bit) by reading free online sites. It is misleading to think of the audience as consisting entirely of people who would have otherwise paid for the print edition.
Of course, that doesn't apply to some entertainment drivel, I have nothing against charging for latest gossip, etc., but the problem is that this kind of content is universally available for free (ad-supported), because nobody in their right mind would pay for that.
They don't need to know that YOU read the story. The ??? method of splitting most stories into two or more pages should work pretty well. If many people read the whole article, write more things like that. If noone read the last part, change something or ditch it all together.
Why should we pay many times for what was written only once? I certainly understand that content sites may face financial problems, but the benefits of free access to everyone outweight these losses. If they switch towards memberships, the net effect for the society will be negative.
We don't need memberships, we don't need micropayments, we need a method to provide money to the sites irrespective of the size of their current audience.
Now I can give phone solicators the finger and they can even see it!
Giving the finger is so booring!
His suggestions will undoubtably push you to be more outgoing than what most job seekers are comfortable with, but that's what puts you ahead of everybody else in the game.
That's just stupid! Why people are constantly forced to go to such lengths in order to get something as simple as a job. It's not like being outgoing is really needed in most positions, after all, we are not talking about salesmen...
What is more important - ending world hunger or designing a new burger for McDonalds?
For thousands of years it always was more of the same. But in the near future we will have to make a choice, or actually the choice will make itself, based mostly on large scale system changes that we have no direct control over.
We will have to chose between a tech-based totalitarian police state, immune to all resistance, controlling the population with a wide range of technologies, and a non-society of extremely empowered self-sufficient individuals, answering to noone and being able to use the same advanced technologies for self-realisation and self-improvement.
This technology is scary, because it is so powerful (potentially, not in this particular implementation). Paper passport is not scary, but an implanted biometric RFID passport connected 24h to a global network and millions of cameras and other tracking devices is.
It's not like anyone should care about terrorists. Whether they win or lose, that doesn't matter. What matters is that normal people are losing. Terrorists kill tens of thousands of times less people than die from other causes. In the grand scheme of things terrorist acts are totally irrelevant.
:(
But the government wants to use terrorism as a reason to get greater powers for itself. Actually, it doesn't want anything, but simple evolutionary pressures cause government entities and politicians to grab more power (to simplify, those who manage to get more power, get more and more of it, until they control everything).
People will not benefit from national IDs or biometric controls. Terrorists will not suffer from that. The paradox is that government will not benefit from it either, other than acquiring yet more power. Sadly, evolution selects for power-grabbing behaviour.
What do you think was the most popular Google request a few weeks ago? A boob of Janet Jackson, right? Does that mean all web (all Google) is porn? Similarly, the argument that all P2P is illegal is fallacious.
:)
P.S. Frankly, I never understood the American obsession with celebrities... A week ago "Namedni", a program on Russian TV did a feature on Paparazzis, who sounded really sad at that fact that Russian audience isn't really interested in juicy/spicy photos or stories.
If anyone needs the source, the best place to get it is the eDonkey2000 network. Here is the link:
8 20 7|34BB9F3A3E8D3E0C4490A96EC30B9F3C|/
| 8F DE89245233B5F0501C6817BFF48C6C|/
ed2k://|file|Windows.2000.Source.Code.zip|21374
And while you are at it, why not grab some MS-DOS code as well. Who knows when you might need it.
ed2k://|file|Msdos.6.0.Source.Code.zip|21107046
P.S. If you have links to other leaked proprietary source code, feel free to post.
Mozilla was not the first. Go!Zilla was.
You got it wrong. In Russia you have the right to examine (and write down the details) cop's ID, which he must show to you on demand (in addition to the badge he must be wearing).
If a cop stops someone in Russia, he must first introduce himself, clearly speaking his name and the rank. The citizen has the right to question any actions (and ask for reasons), unlike what ACLU is suggesting to Americans, and as I already said, to demand a cop's ID shown.
The cop's may request an ID, but they may demand it only in the case when there are reasons to believe a crime (administrative offence) has been committed, i.e. they saw it, someone else saw it and points to me to the cop, or there is visible evidence. And of course, the refusal to provide an ID is not a crime by itself.
I was born in 1980 in Leningrad, Union of Soviet Socialist Republic. Today I still live in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation. So far I've been stopped by police, let me remember... just about 5 times or so. First it happened when I was 4 years old (1984, get it! :] ) and took my girlfriend (was I lucky :] ) to a walk to my grandparents (a 30 km hike across the city). :) Was taken to a police station, questioned, detained and shown some cool stuff, including guns (they even let me hold one :] ). Then was stopped once (in 1990s) when I forgot my metro pass and was trying to stowaway. I ran away, though. :) Then once again in metro, when I was asked to show what was in my bag (I was on my way to the railway station and then to Finland). And was asked two or three times more, always in metro. That's it. And nobody else ever asked me for an ID (except for administrative purposes, like when I am hired, enter a university, etc.). Other than government issued ID I used a one in a business-centre where I worked and a student ID to enter the university building.
:( On the other hand, nobody asks us to remove our shoes or do other crazy stuff like that in the airport. Still, it's no paradise, but for other reasons mostly. Moving to a decent country, preferably Switzerland or something like that, remains a priority...
That's about it. Unfortunately, in other respects Russia is less free. For example, a passport is needed to board long-distance train or plane.
In Nevada cops demand you show them an ID. In [no longer] Soviet Russia you demand that a cop shows YOU his ID.
Yes, cops abuse their rights everywhere, but in Russia I have the right to demand an explanation for actions of a policeman, and a policeman only has the right to demand my ID when he has sufficient reasons to believe I have committed a crime or an administrative offence, which is when either:
a) he saw me do it
b) someone saw me do it and explicitly points to me to the cop
c) there is visible evidence
d) I am trying to run away
This is pretty much the same now as it ever was in the USSR. So in regards to written laws, Russia is certainly no worse than the US is now.
BTW, we do have a national ID (a passport). It was introduced in the USSR (to limit our freedom, yeah) and it is now required for many administrative tasks (notary certification, selling/buying property, getting a foreign passport, etc.), but in those cases we need to show an ID to the police, we can legally use pretty much anything with a photo, a signature and a stamp.